Monday, October 30, 2017

Nonsense and Sensibility: The Survivor Series Conundrum

It has a good foundation, but does that mean it's a universally, objectively good story?
Photo Credit: WWE.com
The current theme for Survivor Series is the same as the concept behind Bragging Rights, a short-lived pay-per-view concept in the dying days of the last brand split. Apparently, after a whole year-plus of infighting and tension at management, the audience is supposed to believe that the rosters are rallying around each other and around their authority figures because that's this month's theme. Watching Nattie Neidhart and Becky Lynch fight side-by-side after spending months sniping at each other felt a bit hollow. It was enough that it made me not really care about Smackdown last week. That being said, were all those proceedings really nonsensical? If so, how much of it was laid out by the creative team, and how much of it is viewer headcanon taking over? It's not an easy question to answer.

For one, the wrestlers seem to have a unifying take on all of this. Wade Keller, the eternal curmudgeon who treats kayfabe like it was the Hope Diamond, went in on the show-ending angle from RAW, and he got the business from two unlikely sources. The first was Dolph Ziggler, who is known for his Twitter ribaldry but rarely for going in on dirtsheet writers. The second was Joey Ryan, who doesn't even work for WWE. Their point of view on the situation brought some clarity, that the wrestlers are as much a fraternity in character as they are out of character. Most personal beefs are small compared to the greater good of the whole body. Whether or not you buy that explanation is one thing, especially given WWE's booking stokes personal enmity, sometimes over the dumbest things, and favors rapid escalation so that the evolution into gimmick matches is available for all feuds. Regardless though, it was a cogent explanation. It's also not as if everyone was on board. Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens were absent from the RAW invasion, which makes sense because they're currently mad at Smackdown commissioner Shane McMahon. It shows that at least in this major instance, the Smackdown creative team is doing due diligence.

One could even look at this as almost a company picnic paradigm, where the same sort of atmosphere is in play. Sure, your coworkers annoy you day in and day out, but when it comes time to compete against the other office, you stomach it because it's a day off and you might get a prize if you win. The big reason why it might not feel like a company picnic is because the company in question deals in violence, namely, intraoffice violence, but if one really wanted to look at it through that lens, it works, and it becomes super-relatable to viewers.

However, that scenario presents two major problems, one tangible, one subjective. The first is obviously the stakes. WWE hasn't really laid out anything on the line outside of pride, and given that wrestlers change alignments all the time and change brands whenever Vince McMahon wants to SHAKE THINGS UP, FUCK YOU, pride seems like a flimsy reason. The other reason has everything to do with how one consumes entertainment. Some people want to relate to their media, and others want vicarious catharsis. The latter does carry a bit of relatability, sure. But at the same time, when I watch wrestling and relate with someone, I don't want that protagonist to feel the same sense of frustration that I do when I run into conflict at work. I want them to be able to ram their target's head clean into a stationary object.

I don't want to see Bobby Roode and Dolph Ziggler fighting vaguely on the same side because their offices are in the same building. I want them to fight, namely, I want Roode to spike Ziggler on his head so hard he forgets his political affiliation and proclivity to make his gimmick that he has entertaining matches. It is a deeply personal thing, and it doesn't necessarily make the current angle bad, but the lack of universality, along WWE's patent lack of motivation for anyone to partake in this the depth and breadth that the Smackdown roster so far has, makes it sketchy to say the least.

It also doesn't help that WWE's creative direction rarely shows signs of an overall unifying direction. While it has done exceedingly well with individual stories (namely Braun Strowman's rice, the reunification of The Shield, Kevin Owens' descent into anarchic madness), rarely is an overarching theme for either show reached before the creative team, led by a chairman in McMahon who has the attention span of a gnat, bails and shuffles several other minor stories. One needs to forgive the skeptic for not getting into this whole hog when the direction just comes out of nowhere.

World-building has almost always been an Achilles' heel for WWE, and the storytelling more often than not tells the audience to accept situations on fiat. In this case, maybe a foundation emerges for people enjoy it with better reason than "turn off your brains for once!" However, it's not something that has a universal basis, and while I won't question why someone now looks forward to the Survivor Series card with bated breath, it's certainly not something for me with great reason.